EVENTS

Curse you, John Wilkins!

I’m all bleary-eyed this morning because late last night, Wilkins linked to this article on Pink Floyd and incidentally sent me off on a late night music jag. He is truly a horrible person.

Pink Floyd was the soundtrack of my youth, from adolescence through grad school and starting a family. I have all their albums, and have listened to every one multiple times — I know (or at least, used to know) the lyrics to “The Gnome”, even, that’s how bad it was. So it was very triggering of Wilkins to remind me, and I had to play a bunch of them very loudly on the home stereo and wallow in the sound.

Don’t worry, Mary was away, so it was just me, alone in a big empty house with most of the lights out, listening to “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” after midnight. I felt like a lonely anomie-laden teenager again. It was great! I’m just paying the price this morning…this morning when I have to bunker down in my office and grade papers.

So now I have to inflict some of it on you. Here’s one of my favorites, “One of These Days”, from Meddle.

Oh, man, there were good memories in there. When my kids were little, we had a tradition of sleeping in on Sunday and then making pancakes (if they’d been very good, chocolate chip pancakes), and sometimes I’d put on Atom Heart Mother while I was puttering in the kitchen, just because “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” was the perfect accompaniment. Now I can’t hear it without an overlay of maudlin sentimentality and memories of happy kids.

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

You just have to check out the right bands.
I like Umphrey’s McGee (obvious Floydheads, plus some Zappa, some metal, some Phish, some fusion, some serious electric guitar playing) and Railroad Earth (more in the Grateful Dead tradition; mostly acoustic, can and do play bluegrass, rock out, or jam most excellently plus great songwriting).

Despite my punk credentials (ha), I have a soft spot for the Floyd (at least pre-Wall Floyd) and a special soft spot for Syd Barrett, without whom I probably never would have picked up a guitar. My last band (which sadly was *cough* 13 years ago) used to play a couple minutes of “Echoes” at the end of our set, forming out of the chaos that was our closing number, the unfortunately named “Mambo #6” (hey, it was 2000!).

title of “Dark Side of the Moon” annoyed you? Didn’t you listen to the whole album? It ends with my favorite line, ever, “There is no dark side of the Moon, As a matter of fact, it’s ALL dark”. Gotcha! A piece of SCIENCE in a psychedelic rock album. Who wooda thunk?

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

Something like Tones on Tails’ Rain, you mean? At the three-minute mark, it’s still establishing the mood.

Someone at Daylight Atheism pointed me in the direction of the Protomen. One of the things that I like about them is that they harken back to the Golden Age of Prog, with concept albums and, yes, six-, seven-, eight-minute songs (I don’t see any longer than that, though).

(I guess I’m just a kid, since I prefer Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Animals, Wish You Were Here over albums like Meddle and Obscured by Clouds.)

On the topic of Dark Side, mostly forgotten British folk/blues combo Medicine Head released an album with the same title a year before Floyd’s. Roger Waters was worried that he was going to have to change the title to Eclipse, but when Medicine Head’s album bombed, they kept the name.

@tajparis: I’m not a fan, but I have to admit that they made some damn good music. About the same feeling I have for the Dead Kennedys … but I have the impression that the punk scene seems to really have an inverted snobbery problem. You don’t often hear Pink Floyd fans dissing Dead Kennedys. The other way around, OTOH … ;P

Ugh, prog rock. One of These Days was alright, but didn’t really kick off ’til four minutes in. Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast was awful!

@Baldyslaphead

I quite like that Porcupine Tree song you posted :) I’ve never really listened to them before. It’s a bit depressing though, had to listen to some New Town Kings to cheer myself up :) Ska, the happiest music on the planet.

@tajparis

No, I’m with you. I like Another Brick in the Wall, but who doesn’t? Other than that I can’t think of any song of theirs I like.

Pink Floyd and Yes made up nearly half of my album library in high school during the ’70s. I then discovered Camel’s “Snow Goose” album freshman year in college and used that instrumental prog rock album as white noise for studying and drowning out all the dorm noises (as well as for the infrequent inhalation therapy sessions.)

Yeah, I like music to do something more than state a theme, repeat it a couple of times, and then fade away. And I like a band that do more than one thing. Hence I still have a considerable fondness for Pink Floyd (I just went through everything of theirs I own last month). Sure, they can do the ordinary pop thing reasonably well, but longer compositions don’t faze them either. (Think “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party,” “Atom Heart Mother,” or “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.”)

One of the first CDs I ever bought was some kind of Pink Floyd compilation disk. The guy at the record store said it was the only thing of theirs available on CD, and offered his opinion that the old albums (Atom Heart Mother was the one I was really looking for) would never come out in digital form, because what would be the point? The old analog stuff would always sound like shit in the new format. But my brother’s kids used to ask me to play what they called “The Wizards’ Duel” (“One of These Days”) whenever they came over.

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

Three minute songs were started when records were first made. The 12″ 78 rpm records could hold about three minutes of audio. It wasn’t until 33 1/3 RPM long play records came along that recordings lasing more than three minutes came around. But by then three minute songs were ingrained so deeply that it still happens even with CDs and MP3s to this day.

As a FloydNoyd who transmogrified into a (now slightly reconstructed) DeadHead this is appreciated. I thought David Gilmour one of the underappreciated guitarists of the ’70s, along with Martin Barre of Jethro Tull. Funny, as I’ve gotten older, my musical horizons have broadened to include reggae, punk, a little hip-hop and so on and so forth. I recall the late, lamented Ron Cuzner, Milwaukee’s premier jazz DJ commenting on who was the “better”sax player. He mentioned Trane, Rollins, Bird, Shorter and then announced a track by Michael Brecker, saying “this is one of MY favorite sax players. For when you get to this level, there is no “better”. It is all a matter of taste”. I like to dredge up my old Little Feat and Allman Bros (talk about a band disinclined to compose three minute songs) discs just to annoy my neighbors.

Oh man, Syd Barrett was my spirit animal in high school, and later in film school I based all my student projects around Floyd’s early music (their way of building a song through ever expanding flights of dizzying noise built around a repeated note translates really well into abstract film structure).

Regarding the Punk v Pink antagonism (i’m a huge fan of both), it’s worth noting that both the Sex Pistols (keeping in mind that Johnny Rotten got picked for the band after being spotted wearing an “I Hate Pink Floyd” t-shirt) and the Damned made serious attempts at tracking down Syd Barrett to get him to produce their albums (The Damned eventually settled for Nick Mason).

I lurve the Floyd! I’ve never heard this one before and I mostly like it, although I’m afraid the sound of someone eating with their mouth open is worse to me than fingernails on a blackboard. (And now I’ve just revealed that I’m an old fart. Who the hell uses blackboards anymore?) (And why won’t those damned kids stay off my lawn?)

On non-snobbery: Okay, I know Primus isn’t punk, but it still made me laugh a little and smile a lot watching the extras on Mike Gordon’s “Rising Low” DVD. Les Claypool was sitting outside chatting with the cameraman, someone mentioned that Chris Squire was in the studio rehearsing, and Claypool got all fanboy. “OMG, Chris Squire! Squee!” (or something like that) I mean, I can sorta see the link from Yes to Primus, but it was still amusing.

And as another kinda sorta rebuttal, I’d suggest that you might not want to bring back the grunge and post-grunge era where nearly every song was stretched out to 5+ minutes*, whether it deserved it or not.

“Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?”

That’s sure a stylish onion you’re wearing in your belt! D-boner!

Ah, the ignorance and selective memory, due to a weakening brain capacity, of the old! Being old myself, I remember just as well, and even better what a fucking nightmare “Prog Rock” was (“Tarkus” anyone? Those Yes albums that went on and on and on?) and how it, with its evil ally Disco, kept the best music off the radio for years – 1977 was one of the greatest years in young people music history, and the radio never let anyone know.

I don’t appreciate it when people of any age rag on modern music for the sake of nostalgia. As a musician, I don’t like it when people assume the current period is devoid of creativity, because they’re effectively saying that I’m devoid of creativity.

By the way, heavy metal has kept the twenty-minute-plus epic alive for the past thirty years, passing the torch from Yes to Dream Theater, then Opeth and Edge of Sanity (the last wrote an album that was one forty minute song – one of the best works of progressive death metal ever). You’re welcome.

I don’t appreciate it when people of any age rag on modern music for the sake of nostalgia. As a musician, I don’t like it when people assume the current period is devoid of creativity, because they’re effectively saying that I’m devoid of creativity.

By the way, heavy metal has kept the twenty-minute-plus epic alive for the past thirty years, passing the torch from Yes to Dream Theater, then Opeth and Edge of Sanity (the last wrote an album that was just one forty minute song entitled Crimson – one of the best works of progressive death metal ever). You’re welcome.

Heh, funnily Floyd was the soundtrack of my adolescence as well, by way of my dad’s record collection, and I still have their entire discography. Now, though, my musical tastes have mutated completely out of control and I’m listening to bizarre mixes of spastic electronica, death metal, baroque classical, swing, jazz, hip hop, gypsy folk… I suppose the experimentalism of Floyd is what stuck..

Ever since I was introduced to this blog in 2004 I’ve wondered what type of music biologists listed to. Do you have music in the lab? I first heard the Floyd while defending my country by going to Vietnam in 1970. I lived in a little building made out of ammo cases and tin with the other company clerk and no kidding, Floyd the cook. No plumbing (only officers deserved their own toilets) but we did have electricity. We also had fairly high end stereo equipment. One evening in early March of ’71, I laid down on the bunk with a head full of every drug available, headphones on and listened to ummagumma. It was my first encounter with those rather unusual sounds and because of the environment and situation I found myself in, it was an unforgettable experience. And a very pleasant one at that. At this moment Henry Flyntt is half way through playing his 1981 composition ‘You Are My Everlovin’. This version of the song is slightly over 42 minutes. This unique, different music is not as startling as Mr. Flynt’s views on evolution. Yikes. Keep up the fine work P.Z.

I am fortunate enough to have seen them 3 times: Winterland in ’70; Carnegie Hall in “72 (they opened with the entire Dark Side of the Moon, which hadn’t come out yet); and Saratoga Performing Arts center in ’73. At Carnegie Hall, they played Careful With That Axe, Eugene and when Waters screamed he also hit a foot pedal that caused the entire stage to blow up, finishing the song in slowly disappearing smoke. That’s as close to a religious experience as I’ll ever have.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond always gets me. We’ve got a local PF cover band called “House of Floyd” that can play the whole repotoire, takes requests on email before the show, and really does it very well. I go see them whenever I can, because even if it’s not real Pink Floyd, it’s all Pink Floyd stuff, and it’s live, and it’s lovely.

This is an algorithmically-generated map of the musical genre-space. Genres and artists are positioned by code and data, adjusted for legibility, but the underlying vectors are less interesting than the juxtapositions and clusters that they produce, so the axes have been deliberately left unlabeled and uncalibrated. You are invited to imagine your own qualities and magnitudes that the geometry might be expressing.

Click anything to hear an example of what it sounds like.

Click the » on a genre to see a map of its artists.

Enjoy!

(Count me in as a fan of WYWH and DSotM; The Wall, not so much except for Nobody Home: the most depressing song every written in a major! key (the F to Fm doesn’t count))

Choctaw BingoSomething light-hearted. Folks from around there know that every place McMurtry mentions in the song is a real place.

“…stopped off in Tushka at that “Pop’s Knife and Gun” place
Bought a SKS rifle and a couple a full cases of that steel core ammo
With the berdan primers from some East bloc nation that no longer needs ’em
And a Desert Eagle that’s one great big ol’ pistol
I mean .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews
And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton’s
Soon as it gets dark we’re gonna have us a time
We’re gonna have us a time

Ruth Ann and Lynn come down from Baxter Springs
That’s one hell raisin’ town way up in Southeastern Kansas
Got a biker bar next to the lingerie store
That’s got them Rolling Stones lips up there in bright pink neon
And they’re right down town where everyone can see ’em
And they burn all night you know they burn all night you know they burn all night
Ruth Ann and Lynn they wear them cut off britches and those skinny little halters
And they’re second cousins to me
Man I don’t care I want to get between ’em
With a great big ol’ hard on like a old bois d’ arc fence post
You could hang a pipe rail gate from
Do some sister twisters ’til the cows come home
And we’d have us a time …”

It is a very fine day when one’s favorite blogger gets off on one’s favorite band.
What a co-inky dink !!!!
Didn’t bother reading the comments above so don’t know if this might have been mentioned, but if you still want a live fix of Floyd I highly recommend “Australian Pink Floyd” for the very best cover. Pigs = absolutely best voice box work I have ever heard.
I have been going to concerts since the Beatles at Shea Stadium, seen a few….
Caught Water’s Wall this winter which was great too. But for full Floyd treatment, watch for them Aussies.
Ranting on,
David

Rev. BDC… which Umphrey’s guy moved there? I’ve met Joel, Stasik and Jake (and Jake’s mom!) and they all seem to be good people.

Chas @41… my favorite UM Floyd cover was from a show at Urbana (I think), where in the motel before the concert, the only good thing on TV was a Liverpool v. Chelsea (?) match. You could hear the crowd sing the Liverpool song, and we were all thinking ‘Fearless’. Sure enough, halfway through first set they pulled it out. Fun show. I’ve seen them almost as many times as I saw Jerry. Nice ‘Bird Song’ by the way. One of my favorites.

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, The Who

Speaking of which: I just saw Yes last month. Never bothered to buy a ticket when they went on sale several months before. Just showed up 10 minutes before show time, was in the process of buying a nosebleed, when a ticket fifth row center “became available”. Sold! Close to the Edge and The Yes Album straight through from front to back, encored with Roundabout. One $7 beer the whole concert and no sweet smell of faraway places. My, how times have changed. And Jon Davison did a laudable job on the vocals.

drewl, I am somewhat envious. I’ve only seen UM maybe 5 or 6 times, but always got my face pretty much melted.
And all I play in the car anymore is the 2006 tour w/ Joshua Redman.
(are you really from Montana?)

There’s plenty of new music longer than 3 minutes long. The real question is when was the last time a piece longer than 3 minutes was played on the air by the radio monopoly. I first heard Careful With That Axe Eugene on FM radio. Maybe they can do some kind of frequency swap and put music radio out of its misery once and for all.

There is a certain spot on a certain river in northwest Wyoming. If you pause there on the north bank on a summer’s eve as the sun sets, the river will play the melody of the song’s refrain for you as it splashes over the rocks.

Anyone else remember when bands would put out music that was more than three minutes long?

As someone whose favorite bands since pre-pubescence have been Rush and Iron Maiden, yes. Speaking of Yes, coming back from my beer run tonight, I drove around the block 5 or 6 times to hear “Heart of the Sunrise” through to the end.

Anyway, to add to the recommendations of bands that are still doing this type of thing today: